Perez damage bill up to three million euros, warns Marko
Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko reckons Sergio Perez’s massive Lap 1 crash could cost the team up to three million euros.
Perez hit the wall hard on the run up the hill towards Massenet after contact with Haas driver Kevin Magnussen.
The Mexican was tagged by Magnussen on the right-hand side and hit the barriers sideways with the left-hand side of his RB20, destroying both front corners.
Though the matter was deemed a racing incident and no further action was taken, both drivers were at odds over who was to blame.
Red Bull’s Marko was highly critical of Magnussen’s role in the crash and suggested the damage bill could run as high as three million euros, which is a setback for Red Bull’s development programme under F1’s cost cap.
“Firstly, it was dangerous, and secondly, the damage is two or three million,” Marko told Austrian broadcaster ORF. “And that’s a big handicap for us with the budget cap regulation.
“It’s another accident where Magnussen was involved. You have to look at it carefully on the replays. Thank God it ended well, but it was a very critical situation.
“I was surprised how quickly [the stewards] put the incident behind them.”
Pierre Gasly, Alpine A524
Photo by: Alpine
Gasly “left a mark on every barrier” to secure Alpine point
Alpine score points for the second time in three races, with Pierre Gasly securing 10th on Sunday.
Gasly survived a controversial collision with team-mate Esteban Ocon, which has landed the latter in hot water with the Enstone outfit.
But he hung on to take 10th, with a lot of the heavy lifting done on Saturday when he scraped through to Q3 with a high risk, high reward strategy.
“This was the most important Saturday of my year, and we showed up,” Gasly said.
“I took a lot of risk, I probably left a tyre mark on every single barrier around the race track, but it was definitely worth it because that first Q3 of the year definitely brought the biggest smile I’ve seen in the garage for a while.
“I’m very happy for all the guys because this year has been a pretty challenging year from the performance side of things but also for the whole team to keep the motivation up.”
Gasly reserved special praise for Alpine’s reserve driver Jack Doohan, who travelled from Monaco to Enstone to help the team nail its qualifying set-up, and then flew back in the early hours of Saturday morning.
“Jack did a very good job in the sim, I told him…
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